All episodes
1-6 Identify the important features of each of the major security laws as they affect investors.
3-1 Explain why the combination of two risky securities can produce a portfolio with less risk than either separately, and compute both the expected rate of return and the standard deviation for any two-security portfolio.
10-1 Explain the various characteristics of mutual funds, including their sales fees, benefits, and disadvantages.
10-2 Describe how closed-end funds work.
10-3 Decide whether an ETF or an index fund is more appropriate for a client.
10-4 Describe the differences between REITs, RELPs, and REMICs.
10-5 Describe the differences between a UIT, a hedge fund, a variable annuity, and a separately managed account.
10-6 Identify the important characteristics to consider in selecting an appropriate mutual fund for a client.
10-7 Reconcile the poor average performance of mutual funds with their appropriateness for an investor's portfolio.
6-1 Describe the basic features of common stock.
6-2 Value common stock using the constant-growth model.
6-3 Describe the different market-price-based ratios for judging a stock's price.
6-4 Distinguish between growth and value stocks and their role in portfolio management.
6-5 Describe the mechanics of dividend payments.
6-6 Describe the key characteristics of other equity instruments, including ADRs and preferred stock.
6-8 Describe the key characteristics of stock-like instruments used in employee compensation, as well as those of nontraditional investments.
6-7 Describe the key characteristics of rights, warrants, and limited partnerships.
14-1 Describe the nine-step investment process and identify the six common components of an investment policy statement.
14-2 Describe the relationship between the number of securities in a portfolio, the types of securities in a portfolio, and the riskiness of a portfolio.
14-3 Explain the key issues associated with portfolio rebalancing.
14-4 Discuss other aspects of investment selection including investment effort, minimum investment size, ethical and moral issues, different tax treatments, and concentrated portfolios.
14-5 Demonstrate how dollar-cost averaging plans work and describe examples of these plans.
14-6 Describe phenomena associated with behavioral finance and explain the implications of these phenomena for a financial planner.
14-7 Describe strategies for selling the client on a plan.
13-1 Explain the basic model of personal taxation, compute a tax liability, and identify the relevant marginal tax rate.
13-2 Compute the cost basis or adjusted cost basis of an investment.
13-3 Determine the tax consequences of various equity investments, including the treatment of capital gains and losses as well as qualified and nonqualified dividend income.
13-4 Discuss the pros and cons of tax-loss harvesting and tax-efficient investing.
13-5 Avoid subjecting a client to violations of the wash-sale rule for various types of investments.
13-6 Compute the tax consequences associated with investing in various types of bonds, including a tax-equivalent yield.
13-7 Describe the tax issues associated with investing in investment companies, options, annuities, LPs and MLPs, as well as futures contracts.
13-8 Demonstrate the tax advantages of net unrealized appreciation on stock distributions from a pension plan, tax-harvesting losses in an IRA account, and the tax implications of converting assets from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA.
12-1 Describe the characteristics of the spot market, forward contracts, and futures contracts.
12-2 Describe the institutional framework for trading futures contracts.
12-3 Describe the general characteristics of futures contracts.
12-4 Apply trading strategies using futures contracts, especially with regard to the creation of basis risk.
12-5 Utilize a financial futures contract to hedge market or interest rate risks.
11-1 Be conversant in the basic option terminology and the mechanics of the options markets.
11-2 Describe the two reasons options have value, and compute the value for each reason.
11-3 Construct a profit function for a person long or short a put or call option.
11-4 Construct a profit function for combinations of options and stocks.
11-5 Describe how the variables used in the Black-Scholes and binomial option pricing models and the put-call parity relationship affect the value of a call option.
11-6 Describe how stock index options, interest rate options, and LEAPS® differ from listed puts and calls on common stock.
11-7 Explain the advantages and disadvantages of convertibles and compute conversion values and conversion premiums.
9-1 Compute the price of a bond, given the discount rate, and the yield to maturity, given the price.
9-2 Compute the current yield, the realized compound yield to maturity, the yield to call, and the realized rate of return for a bond.
9-3 Identify the factors that influence the price volatility of a bond.
9-4 Compute a bond's duration statistic.
9-5 Explain how to use the duration statistic as an index number, to estimate bond price changes, and as a tool for immunizing a portfolio.
9-6 Discuss bond swaps, ladders, bullets, and barbells as strategies for managing a bond portfolio.
9-7 Describe the term structure of interest rates, and explain the investment implications of the term structure.
9-8 Describe several factors that affect bond prices and yields.
8-1 Describe the key nonmarketable instruments available to a client
8-2 Explain what is meant by the money market and describe the key money market instruments.
8-3 Describe the various securities and interest rates related to the money market.
8-4 Describe the general characteristics of government and government-related bonds.
8-5 Describe the general characteristics of corporate bonds.
8-6 Explain the process of corporate bankruptcy.
8-7 Describe the different features of mortgage-backed securities.
8-8 Discuss other types of debt instruments, including international bonds, private placements, promissory notes, and insurance-based contracts.
7-1 Describe a business cycle, and explain what is meant by leading, coincident, and lagging indicators.
7-2 Describe the tools of fiscal policy and how they work.
7-3 Describe the tools of monetary policy and how they work.
7-4 Describe the goals and the problems in implementing fiscal and monetary policy.
7-5 Describe the life-cycle of an industry.
7-6 Interpret a balance sheet, an income statement, and a statement of cash flows.
7-7 Analyze a company with respect to its liquidity, use of financial leverage, and profitability.
7-8 Analyze a company with respect to its activity and other ratios, including the use of a Du Pont analysis.
5-1 Explain the three forms of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH).
5-2 Describe serial correlation tests and filter rule tests, and indicate their significance.
5-3 Define an anomaly and identify various anomalies that have been tested.
5-4 Define the common sentiment, flow-of-funds, and market structure indicators, and indicate which are bullish, which are bearish, and why.
5-5 Describe how bar and point-and-figure charts are constructed, and how one interprets a chart pattern, such as a head-and-shoulders formation.
4-1 Compute a time-weighted rate of return.
4-2 Compute a dollar-weighted rate of return.
4-3 Compute a PPR when there are interim cash flows and convert a sequence of monthly or quarterly rates of return to an annual rate of return.
4-4 Describe some of the more commonly used indices and their deficiencies.
4-5 Identify an appropriate benchmark portfolio.
4-6 Compute the Sharpe ratio to evaluate portfolio performance.
4-7 Compute the Treynor ratio to evaluate portfolio performance.
4-8 Compute Jensen's alpha and the Information Ratio to evaluate portfolio performance.
3-2 Describe how the optimal portfolio for an investor is the tangency between the efficient frontier and the highest possible indifference curve.
3-3 Show why an investor would prefer as low a correlation coefficient as possible for a two-security portfolio.
3-4 Explain why the fact that the "new" efficient frontier as defined by the capital market line (CML) dominates the "old" efficient frontier produced by N risky assets alters one's perception of the appropriate portfolio for an investor to hold.
3-5 Explain the roles of beta and the coefficient of determination in defining the risk of a particular security as part of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM).
3-6 Describe the arbitrage pricing theory (APT) model.
3-7 Describe why an understanding of modern portfolio theory (MPT) and its legal implications for a practitioner are important for today's financial planner.
2-1 Compute a holding period return, a per-period return, an arithmetic mean return, and a geometric mean return.
2-2 Compute an expected rate of return and an effective annual rate of return.
2-3 Describe the sources of risk and the most common methods of dealing with each source.
2-4 Describe various measures of risk, and compute the variance and standard deviation for a set of ex post returns.
2-5 Describe what is meant by a normal, a lognormal, and a skewed distribution, and identify the forms of kurtosis.
2-7 Compute the buying power of a margin account, its equity value, the value at which a margin call will be made
2-6 Explain how a Monte Carlo simulation is performed, and understand its implications in considering an investment strategy.
1-1 Explain the purpose and mechanics of the primary market.
1-2 Describe the people associated with the secondary market.
1-3 Describe the institutions of the secondary market.
1-4 Describe the costs of trading, types of transactions, and types of orders an investor can use, and indicate when it is most appropriate to use which type of order.
1-5 Describe the mechanics and the risk exposures associated with selling short, and the mechanics of large secondary market trades.
1-7 Decide whether to own a security in street name or to order it out, evaluate which type of account is appropriate, and measure the volume of trading activity in an account.